• You could easily predict the performance of your leaders, your teams and your organization?
• You could gain access to the underlying motivators that drive a leader or employee to do their best work?
• You could eliminate costly hiring mistakes and determine in advance to what extent a candidate will perform well in a role?

Such a solution exists and can unleash the potential and performance within your organization.

It’s called motivational profiling.  Your underlying (and often unconscious) attitudes and motivations determine what you pay attention to and focus on in your leadership role.

These deep motivation and attitudinal patterns  (MAPs) ultimately drive – yours and others’ –

• Behaviors
• Decision making style
• Requirements for change and variety
• Dominant motivation driver
• Levels of strategic and visionary thinking
• Relationship to norms/rules
• Orientation toward innovation and creativity
• And much more

Drawing on recent evolutions in cognitive science research, motivational profiling is a state-of-the-art assessment tool that provides a window into yours and your employees’ intrinsic motivations and attitudes at work.

These intrinsic motivations are the invisible forces that pull you and your organization in a certain direction.   By uncovering these patterns, you can unlock the motivational code for improving engagement, productivity and performance in your workplace.

Before delving into 7 key leadership motivation patterns, let’s first look at 3 often-missed truths about performance.

3 truths every leader needs to know about performance

1.  Most companies mistakenly believe that competencies are the #1 driver of performance.  

Not true!  Just because you have a certain capability doesn’t mean that you are motivated to use it.  We all know people who are highly educated and/or talented, yet just get by in their work role.  As Zig Ziglar said,

“Attitude, not Aptitude, determines Altitude.”

Competency accounts for, at best, 20% of performance.  Yet companies continue to invest in skills development only to be disappointed by little or no difference in performance.

The truth is your motivation patterns account for as much as 60% of performance.  Motivation patterns reflect whether you want to do something, NOT whether you can do it.

2.  Different leadership roles require different motivation patterns for high performance in that role.

While there are certain patterns important to all leaders – such as, a high people interest, specific leadership roles may require different motivational patterns to be successful.

For example,

A successful CFO is likely to have such MAPs (Motivation and Attitudinal patterns) as — strong motivation toward procedures over options; a preference for solving problems over focus on goals; and a high past time orientation that drives focus on traditions, past experience and benchmarks.

A successful CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) is likely to have such MAPs as – strong motivation toward options (ie., how to do something faster, better or cheaper) over procedures; high motivation toward goals, rather than avoiding problems; and high future time orientation with a focus on long term strategies, future customer needs and environmental changes.

Motivational profiling can help you put the best individuals into a specific leadership roles with the best chances of success.  Not only will motivational profiling tell you if an individual is naturally wired to be a successful leader.  It will also tell you for a given leadership role, if he/she is likely to excel.

3.  All behavior is motivated. If you want to change a leader’s behavior, change the motive underlying the behavior.

Common company practices tend to focus on behavioral changes to increase performance.  However, your behavior is a symptom or byproduct of your underlying motives.

Changing just behavior is at best temporary.  For permanent behavioral change, you must change the underlying motivation.

Identify the motive and you will understand the behavior.  Satisfy the motive and you will manage the behavior.

7 motivational patterns of high performance leadership

Since 2002, Carl Harshman — Founder, Institute for Work Attitude and Motivation –  has studied hundreds of business leaders’ MAPs.  He found the following 7 strong (high score) motivation patterns as key drivers of leadership effectiveness and performance.

Goal Orientation

Goal orientation is one of 2 patterns that reflect your direction motivation.  With a high goal orientation score, you are motivated to move toward goals, pleasure or something positive.

Its companion MAP — Problem Solving – reflects to what extent you are motivated to move away from pain, problems or risk.

High performing leaders tend to score high on goal orientation.  They want to focus on and pursue goals more than avoiding problems.

Breadth

The Breadth pattern reflects to what extent a leader focuses on the “big picture.”  It also reflects a leader’s cognitive style to think in broad, large chunks of information.  Like seeing a landscape from 10,000 feet above.

Its companion pattern is Depth – ie.,, thinking in small chunks of information and focusing on details.  Effective managers are typically more oriented toward details, as are functions like quality control and accounting.

Future Orientation

There are 3 Time Orientation patterns – Past, Present and Future.  This set of patterns influences your focus, decision making and thinking style.

High performance leaders tend to think from the future.  They want to pay more attention to a long term, rather than short term, view.  Effective managers, on the other hand, are more Present time oriented to deal with daily activities.

Power

In the context of MAPs assessment, the Power pattern reflects to what extent a leader wants to be in charge.  It is one of three core motivational drivers identified by McClelland.  The other two motivation drivers are Affiliation and Achievement.

High performing leaders score in the healthy range of Power – neither overly strong nor weak.  Too high and the leader becomes domineering.  Too weak and the leader shrinks from being in charge and their own personal power.

People and Group

There are two individual, yet highly related, patterns that high performing leaders tend to score high (or at least normal range) on each.

The People pattern is an interest filter.  A high score means the leader wants to deal with people as part of their role.  Other interest filters are oriented around things, such as systems, tools, money, activity, etc.

The Group pattern is an indication to what extent a leader wants to have contact with people as part of their role.

Evolution

This is one of three patterns that relates to a leader’s relationship with change.  A high Evolution score is typical of high performing leaders and indicates a motivation for planned, incremental change.  The Evolution pattern is synonymous with “continuous improvement.”

The other 2 change patterns are Sameness and Differences.  For different industries, these 2 patterns may play a more important role for leaders.

Shared Responsibility

This pattern and its companion pattern (Sole Responsibility) indicate a leader’s motivation as it relates to responsibility.

High performing leaders tend to have a high Shared Responsibility score.  It indicates that they are motivated to be great team players and delegators.  They want to collaborate and share responsibility.

By no means, are these the only motivation patterns that can impact your leadership performance.  They serve, however, as a starting point to help you identify to what extent you focus on (or motivated by) these 7 areas.

Real stories … real breakthroughs

When I assess leaders’ motivational patterns, I am looking at both 48 distinct motivational patterns, as well as combination of patterns, as clues about what is hindering or can enhance a leader’s performance.

I now have the luxury of accessing these patterns through an online tool.  It has opened the door to deep insights for many leaders, teams and organizations.

Not only has performance improved, leaders and teams rise to the top of their game, more engaged and motivated.  Below are 2 examples.

1.    Within 6 months, low performers became high performers.  Increased revenues – 33%.

Through motivation profiling and Models of Excellence tools, the motivation patterns of high performers within a call center were identified.  Under-performers were trained to replicate motivation patterns of high performers.  Results: 33% increase in revenues in 6 months;  a motivation profile of high performers also served as a recruiting tool for hiring top talent.

2.    Improved leadership teamwork, cohesiveness and performance.

A common leadership issue is being in sync and working as a team.  While some skills come into play for stronger teamwork, the bigger, often missed, issue is the differences in motivation patterns across the leadership team.

The key for this company was to train each leader in their own motivation patterns, as well as those of the other leaders.  When leaders were able to understand each other on a deep motivation level and how their differences were sources of team brilliance (rather than team breakdowns), team communication improved and performance increased.

Check out these free resources for more information:

• iWAM:  Mapping the New Landscape of Human Performance  (PPT download)
• Talent Management:  A Focus on Excellence (free 93 page ebook)

Email me with any questions.

The post Deep Motivations, Not Competencies, Drive Leadership Performance. appeared first on The Empowered Business.

As mentioned in our article “The Shocking Costs of Hiring Mistakes … And The Secrets to Avoiding Them,“  too many hiring decisions are based solely on past experience and current skills without any regard to the real drivers - – mindset and “fit” – – of top performance.

With permission to reprint his article “Hire for Will;  Teach the Skill,” Ron Alvesteffer, CEO, SEI Service Express, Inc., shares how his company hires top-performing employees – – his secret to achieving SEI growth goals and cultivating an exceptional organizational culture.  Enjoy his wisdom!

(Reprinted with permission from March 27, 2013)

Hire The Will; Teach the Skill

by Ron Alvesteffer

It’s a phrase I often use with leaders at SEI, particularly when they’re recruiting for talent at our organization.

Because SEI is a growing company with an exceptional culture, we’re fortunate that we attract applicants with a high level of skill and aptitude in their areas of expertise.

But we don’t just hire people who can do the job.  By the time they’ve made it past our initial screening process, we’ve determined that they have both the skills and the aptitude to succeed.  We also have many candidates who rise to the top because they have an advanced skill set.

It can be tempting for hiring managers to rush the process because they have extra work that needs to be off-loaded, they don’t have time to sit through more interviews, or they feel pressure from others to fill the position.  In my experience, rushing this critical process does a disservice to the new employee and to the business.  In the end, hiring the wrong person often leads to more work because employees are left to clean up.  Work loads are compounded, the recruiting process must begin all over again, and the pressure that hiring managers feel is exacerbated.

A recent study uncovered that 46% of new hires don’t make it past the first 18 months of employment.  Of those, 89% didn’t make it because of attitudinal reasons, while 11% didn’t make it because of lack of skill.  As a result, companies are experiencing high levels of turn-over which put s a significant strain on productivity, innovation, customer service, revenue, margins, growth and employee engagement.

At SEI we don’t hire the skill; skill can be learned.  We hire the will.

While there are simple tests that can measure both skill and proficiency, for many organizations finding A Players can be both challenging and more resource intensive.

Because one person’s attitude has a significant impact on the culture of an entire organization, recruitment should be a high priority.

David Packard once said “No company can consistently grow revenues faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth.”

We guard our culture fiercely and decided early on that we would would take the time necessary to hire people who are a great culture fit for SEI.

SEI is exceptional because our people are exceptional.

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About Ron Alvesteffer:

Ron Alvesteffer is the President of Service Express, Inc and is the author of The SEI Way. He speaks and writes about leadership and on building workplace cultures that produce great results.

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Questions to ask yourself:

• What are the criteria, traits and attitudes that differentiate an “A” player from a “B” and “C” player for each role in your organization?
• Is every leader on your team performing at an “A” level?  If not, what is your development plan to raise the bar for that leader?
• How do you interview, screen and select for the right attitudes and traits for a given role?
• What lessons have you learned about your own blind spots from past hiring mistakes?

Share your experience, questions and challenges in hiring top talent within your organization in the comment box below.

The post The Secret to Hiring Top-Performing Employees appeared first on The Empowered Business.

One costly hiring mistake that I have observed with leaders is the unconscious avoidance, denial and/or toleration of under-performing employees.

Shocking costs of hiring mistakes

More commonly known as the cost of a mis-hire.

According to Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos, hiring mistakes have cost his company as much as $100 million!  That’s alot of dollars immediately subtracted from the bottomline.

For many companies, that one mistake can make the difference between surviving and thriving, between mediocrity and high performance.  Mis-hires and under-performing employees are the #1 profit leak in companies today.

Why Does This Issue Perpetuate Unknowingly in Many Companies?

For one, few companies actually take the time to calculate the hard and soft costs of even a single mis-hire.  Ignorance is not bliss in this case.  The higher the level of the position, the quicker the cost of a mis-hire increases exponentially.

To understand why such a large number, let’s look closely at the long list of direct, indirect and long-term opportunity costs of a mis-hire:

• costs associated with your time, your team’s time and any outside recruiting help in finding, screening and interviewing the pool of possible candidates
• costs associated with reference checking
• hard and soft costs associated with training a new employee
• costs associated with manager’s time to get a new employee up to speed
• costs associated with the lost productivity of a new employee for at least first 3-6 months
• long-term opportunity costs – seldom considered – with a mis-hire

-   substandard service

-   lowered employee morale and the resulting substandard performance in other employees

-   missed deadlines

-   customer dissatisfaction with product quality, customer service and/or lost trust/faith in the company

-   missed sales opportunities

-   and so much more

According to Guy Kawasaki, best selling author and former Chief Evangelist at Apple, there is another hidden high cost of mis-hires. “’A’ players tend to hire ‘A’ players; ‘B’ players tend to hire ‘C’ players and so forth.”   How does that translate to you and your organization?

If you are hiring anything less than “A” performing leaders, your leaders will hire mediocre employees that are not as good as they are, due to their own insecurities.  Perpetuating that under-performing cycle throughout the organization, your “B” and “C” leaders will cost you many times more than the $6 million we quoted above.

Can your bottomline afford that?

Why Is the High Cost of Mis-Hires Rampant?

Below are the 4 most common reason for hiring mistakes I have found in working with companies for over 30 years:

• Hiring decisions are at least 80% made as “gut feeling” or “based on appearances”  — such as, “I liked the person,” “they seemed honest and hard working,” etc.

• Scarcity and/or urgency mindset — a belief that few candidates have the skills you need or you are driven by outside pressures to fill the spot immediately and settle for mediocre candidates.
• As a hiring manager, you are dazzled by first impressions, how good the person looks on paper, credentials, advanced degrees, well-prepared interview responses, etc. In addition, the highly competitive job market has triggered an increase in exaggerated claims, embellished resumes and “half truths” often missed in the hiring process.
• Not understanding the difference between and/or having the needed tools to discern top talent vs. best fit talent.  With all the buzz about hiring top talent, many companies seek the most impressive backgrounds, past successes and prestigious credentials in their pursuit of top talent without any regard to best fit talent.

Past success and experience are often an unreliable predictor of future performance.  Why?  Because different people are motivated by and excel in different work environments, organizational cultures, job opportunities, etc.  Competencies and skills only account for 20% of future performance.  The right attitudes, motivations, values and goals for a given role and company predict 80% of performance.

What are the 5 Best Secrets to Avoiding Costly Hiring Mistakes and Finding Best Fit Employees?

Secret #1:  Shift your mindset from hiring employees to hiring partners.

Your employees are your most important partners and stakeholders.  Hiring employees is like finding the best marriage partner or close circle of friends.

You seek those who have similar values, will make you a better person and provide synergies for both of you to create something bigger than you can individually.  While you may value their past accomplishments and expertise, it’s what’s on the inside and the synergies between you that will make that partnership fly.

Secret #2:  Hire those with the capacity to excel and exceed you.

I emphasize finding those with the best capacity to excel and outperform others, including yourself.  Capacity not only includes current capabilities.

Capacity also includes the right mindset, motivational drivers and thinking necessary to ignite future potential.  It takes extraordinary self-confidence, soul searching and inner security for leaders to recognize when they hire those that exceed them, everyone wins.

Secret #3:  Hire “A+” players based on attitude, motivation and culture fit.

How you assess best talent fit for your company and for each role is the single most important ingredient to successful hiring and maximizing employee performance.

The best tool I have found to help clients assess attitude and motivation fit is an online assessment tool (IWAM), uncovering 48 unique attitude and motivation drivers that best predict future performance.  Although all patterns are important in varying degrees, there are usually 6-8 drivers most critical for company/culture fit and a handful of other drivers important to A performance in a given role/function.  For more info about how IWAM can help you hire best fit talent, go HERE!

In addition, to further assess culture fit, it is important that leaders learn scenario building interviewing skills, or hypothetical “what if” questions for assessing values and traits, without the candidate’s awareness or ability to prepare for such questions.

Secret #4:  Develop a mission statement, results-oriented job description and list of non-negotiable traits before you start the hiring process.

You can’t know how to assess a best fit candidate unless you know why you are hiring someone, how will their contributions impact company goals and be measured and what traits are needed to excel in that specific role. 

Most job descriptions are long laundry list of tasks and responsibilities without justification why the position exists or a scorecard how to evaluate success and performance.  Without this information, the probability of finding those with greatest chance to succeed and raise the game is very low.

Secret #5:  Stop relying on intuition; start relying on unbiased, objective due diligence.

I’ve have heard too many leaders’ hiring regret stories.  Examples of when they were convinced a candidate would work based on feelings and impressions, only to find after a year of frustration, procrastination and endless coaching, that they made a mistake.  A million dollar (or more) mistake, at that.

To avoid this pitfall, develop a rigorous hiring process.  Develop screening criteria and use objective data to eliminate candidates right away.

Examples could include driving history check, credit check, drug tests if necessary, etc.  What you are seeking are personal records that reflect a candidate’s character.  Also check character references, asking truth-telling questions, like … on a scale 1-10, how well did the candidate get along with co-workers?  And, why that #? 

After 1-2 stages of screening, have a team of individuals from a variety of positions interview candidates with list of prepared questions and hands-on problem solving scenarios of common role/company issues.  To ensure a candidate is aligned with company purpose, you should also ask “purpose based” questions such as, “what do you want to be remembered for?  Or “when in your life have you been so passionately focused on an activity that you lost track of time and what were you doing?”

Hiring, by no means, is a science.  Even with the best hiring systems, mistakes will be made.  The key is to hire slowly, fire quickly.  Your credibility and reputation as a leader, inside and outside, depend on it.  Be rigorously honest about your past hiring mistakes, your own hiring blindspots and the changes you will make to start hiring your best employees.

Let’s keep the conversation going.   Visit our blog to share your comments, biggest hiring mistakes, stories of regret, burning questions and valuable resources for finding and hiring best fit employees.  We want to hear from you!

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The post Shocking Costs of Hiring Mistakes appeared first on The Empowered Business.